


Return the Favor

by krav



Category: Mutant Chronicles (Movie), Supernatural
Genre: Age of Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, B-Movies, Crossover Pairings, M/M, Old Friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-28 04:43:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8432296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krav/pseuds/krav
Summary: "You watch your ass up there, compañero. It don't look that safe.""Gotta pay for those tickets sooner or later."[warning: as it stands, chapter 1 is incomplete It's this really long fight scene and I had to stop writing it in the middle. Will update. Nothing wrong with reading what's there so far, but the end of chapter 1 is just really fucking abrupt...sorry]





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set during _Mutant Chronicles_ —Some monks select a team of elite warriors to blow up an enormous mutant-producing machine buried deep in the earth. On one of numerous descents, Corporal Kim, "Juba," and Sergeant Winchester, "Dean," get separated from the rest of the party...

Hunter shines his light down the elevator shaft. It appears endless, plunging down into the core of the earth. "Jesus, that's deep."

Behind him, Barrera gives a low whistle.

"Well, someone's gonna have to stay up here. We don't want them coming down on top of us."

For a moment, nobody speaks. Since they reached the lost city, mutants have been stalking them, some circling above in the rafters, some lurking in the shadows or hiding behind the mutilated statues in the temple, just waiting to pick off anyone who lags behind. All present know that whoever stays to guard the rear will die.

Then Juba says, "I got it," and vaults himself up into the ruined lift.

"You watch your ass up there, compañero." Barrera hands Juba his rifle, surveying the ancient lift. "It don't look that safe."

Juba smiles. "Gotta pay for those tickets sooner or later."

"Verdad," Barrera replies. "Take care of yourself Juba."

Juba nods, and they bump fists. Then the seasoned warrior settles into the broken lift, balancing rifle over pack like a sniper, aiming at some fell demon above.

The rest file on to a rope, anchored just beyond the lift and dangling down into the darkness. Brother Samuel is passing out descenders.

Dean halts, watching Juba—more out of curiosity than anything. He wonders whether Juba has a death wish, or if he's just so inured to the concept of dying that his own passing hardly registers. The question evokes a blur of memories in rapid succession:

_Juba digging a bullet out of his own chest with a penknife._

_Juba elbowing his way to the front of the line._

_Juba charging the enemy with a wild yell._

_"Death is the shark."_

Juba catches him watching. Smiles.

Dean's stomach twists. "I'm staying too," he decides.

"Dios mío, both of you," Barrera swears under his breath, but he doubles back to give Dean a leg up. "Watch yourself, Winchester." He claps a hand to the side of Dean's neck in a brief, fond gesture, then joins the others rappelling below.

Dean clears his throat, checking his guns perfunctorily. Juba doesn't look at him. He fingers the line of rope, now taut with the weight of their company propelling down into the depths of hell.

"You scared of low places?" Juba says finally, as the last of their company clambers onto the overtaxed rope.

Dean watches him. "Not particularly," he says.

"Then why'd you stay," Juba shoots back, eyes flashing in the dark. A sneer cuts his features. "I know you got a big heart, Winchester, but don't tell me you're here so I don't have to die alone."

Dean scoffs, "'course not," and it feels like a lie.

Juba won't meet Dean's eyes: his anger is evident, but his comrade can only guess at its source.

After a long moment he sighs, getting to his feet in the narrow space and kicking Dean's boot companionably. "von Steiner will have a cow, once he finds out you're missing..."

And just like that, the tension that's been mounting between them since they took this assignment dissipates like fog into the night.

Dean snorts. "Thought we were taking orders from Samuel. End of the world and all."

Juba grins. "End of  _your_ world," he taunts, grabbing Dean's rifle and standing it in the corner, then pulling Dean to his feet too, looking into his eyes. "When's the last time you went to church?"

Dean scowls and cuts his eyes away. "Right, like you're a regular parishioner."

Juba watches him intently, the same heated interest that always makes Dean's heart kick in his chest. "My daddy wasn't a preacher," he says.

"Fuck off."

Juba's silent for a moment, close in the narrowness of the lift. Dean grabs his pack and wedges it into the space above the lift, fumbling for the ties in the dark.

"You say goodbye to him?"

Dean freezes in the act of unpacking rounds of ammo. He and Juba never tiptoed around each other, but that question is like acid biting into his oldest wounds.

"Nah," he says softly. "Don't s'pose he'd wanna hear it."

Beside him, Juba nods.

At seventeen, Dean made it across Corporate lines. He barely survived the trip out of Capitol—the only reason Bauhaus took him in, hungry and naked and bleeding, was because he could still fight. Bauhaus was smaller back then—a tiny, discontented political faction under a blood-red flag—but due to its advantageous location and general ruthlessness, it has grown huge and monstrous in ten short years.

He never told Juba he was from Capitol, perhaps because of the brutality of his motherland, or perhaps it just never came up, but he told him about his father's sermons, and about his father publicly disowning him after catching him with another boy's tongue in his mouth. On the eve of another suicide mission, head swimming with homemade rice wine, he recounted these things at Juba's request, and his comrade just nodded then, too.

Now he stacks half of the ammo on the ledge above the elevator, and lines the rest up behind Juba's pack. He can feel Juba's eyes on him, but his friend's been weird lately, so he ducks his head and doesn't comment.

They settle in, side by side, like they always used to do when they were on the defensive, down in a foxhole, or in the thick, foul mud of the trenches.

"For what it's worth, I never cared if you were a fag."

Dean grits his teeth, thinking of his father. "Told you already—I'm not a fag."

Juba shrugs. "Fine. But I wouldn't care if you were."

 

* * *

 

The first few mutants lurch in view one by one, and they pick them off before they reach the lift, trying to ignore the shouts of their company below. The line is still taut, which means they need to stay put.

Too late, Dean realizes they have no tools to rappel down the line after their comrades. Just as well, since they're supposed to hold the rear until they themselves fall. And what happens then? Dean hopes they won't be dragged down into the machine and turned into monsters, but he gets this feeling like they won't have much choice in the matter.

He presses his shoulder more firmly into Juba's, reloading fast. The gunfire is deafening inside the lift.

When the mutants have fallen, Juba takes aim beside him and he reloads again.

Fingers on his chin interrupt the practiced motion. Juba looks into his eyes, surprisingly gentle, and pops a cigarette between his lips. While Dean's still frozen with surprise, Juba lights a match, waits for Dean to take a pull, then kisses his cheek.

"Always thought you were beautiful," Juba explains with an unapologetic grin, then cuts down two more mutants as they stagger into the atrium.

Dean takes aim as his friend reloads, biting the end of the cigarette and angling it so the smoke won't get in his eyes. The smoke has nothing to do with how he can't breathe, and the sight of more mutants filing in to attack has nothing to do with how he can't think of a reply.

For several minutes, they can barely reload fast enough to fell each of their marks. Then a sudden reprieve leaves them deaf from the automatic fire, and they reload with the silence pressing against their eardrums like thick cotton, waiting. When no mutants come forward, Juba sprawls back and takes the cigarette from between Dean's lips. They each take drags of the tobacco until it dwindles to a soggy butt and Juba tosses it out of the lift. Dean half hopes it will light up one of the bodies to dispel the eerie shadows, but it simply smolders and goes out. Dean stares numbly at the darkness left behind.

He's thinking about oblivion, or nothing at all, when he becomes aware of Juba tugging at his collar. He's got a fraction of a second to feel annoyed—seems Juba's always pulling on him, one way or another—then Juba presses a lingering kiss to his mouth.

Dean's brain takes a moment to process what just happened, and it doesn't fully compute. Juba watches him.

When he finally speaks, his voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. "Do that again."

Juba doesn't move, watching him.

Dean frowns and cuts his eyes away, scanning the atrium for any sign of activity. Juba takes his face in both hands, tugging him back.

"I outrank you," Dean reminds his friend testily. He's struck by the wild desire to laugh at himself for thinking that rank might endure even as the world's barest infrastructure approaches collapse.

Juba watches him, eyes like silk on stone. And he says, "Yes, Sir."

Tentative at first, lips bitter and tasting of ash, of death, the kiss quickly grows hot and deep, devolving into something like blind rapture: in the moment, they forget their duties and their doom, each fumbling for the other's clothing and dragging him close as they kiss clumsily, hard, all tongue and no technique, blood thundering so loud they can barely hear their own ragged breath.

Breaking for air, they clutch each other, panting. Once you enlist, this sort of sudden, overwhelming intimacy is supposed to vanish as the faces become unfamiliar, and yet... Dean presses his lips to Juba's face, smudging the ever-present layer of dirt and grime coating his skin. Juba, breathless, chases his mouth, smiling when Dean evades capture. Eventually Juba stops him, holds him still. Slowly, he licks Dean's moist lips, pushing close and kissing his mouth again, one hand finding Dean's hammering heart.

Aching with arousal and a confusion of feelings, Dean finally pulls away to check their post.

At first, he sees nothing because they're everywhere, lining the walls and blocking all the exits. As his eyes adjust to the shadowy multitude, he marvels at how two minutes' distraction was long enough for the hordes to surround them, cutting them off completely. Not that they had anyplace else to go.

"Juba," he croaks. "Incoming."

They hunker down with their rifles, but the mutants remain in the shadows, moving just enough to allow more mutants into the atrium, all staring at the pair of soldiers through bloodshot, alien eyes that betray no relic of their lost humanity.

Juba swears under his breath in his mother tongue— _words Dean recognizes but doesn't understand_ —and looks considerably less thrilled about their fate than he did when he first vaulted up into the broken lift, but when he speaks, his tone remains conversational, even bored.

"How many, you think?"

"Dozens," Dean guesses, "maybe a gross. Conservative estimate."

Juba smiles.

Dean sighs. "It's a motherfucking legion," he amends, even as more mutants crowd into the shadows. He's kicking himself for getting distracted, though part of him knows it wouldn't have mattered.

"You ready, Juba? They're gonna swarm us. I'll aim high, you go for the knees, and we'll hold 'em off as long as we can, but this is it. End of the fucking line." He pumps his shotgun and props it beside him for when his rifle runs out of ammo. "Hope you enjoyed your cigarette," he adds, with a touch of bitterness that he doesn't feel like examining.

"Call me Wu," Juba requests, out of left field.

"Wu?"

"It's míng—my personal name."

"I know what it is! Look, why d'you want me to call you something different just as we're preparing to die?"

"Because Duvall's right: death is an intimate thing."

"Well we ain't dead yet," Dean scowls. _Wu_ , he thinks. _I'll never get used to it_.

He softens a little at the look in his comrade's eye—silk, on stone. "Hey, you s'pose we get sent to heaven, or just back to Bauhaus?"

Juba smiles, and doesn't answer.

"'Least you'll get your jollies, you bloodthirsty maniac," Dean mutters.

Laughing, Juba presses in beside him, rifle ready. For the past six years, every time Dean thinks he's gonna die, Juba's right there next to him. His chest tightens painfully.

On cue, Juba elbows him and asks, "Any regrets?"

Dean looks his friend in the eyes and doesn't know where to start.

"Your dad," Juba says quickly, covering for him.

Dean nods, swallowing thickly. "You?"

"Just one."

"That so?" Dean asks with genuine surprise. Usually when they run this dialogue, Dean lists about six things, half of which he actually regrets, and Juba comes back with no regrets whatsoever. "Better get it off your chest while you still got breath."

Juba grins. "Wish I'd taken you to bed when I had the chance."

"Fuckin hell," Dean mumbles, flushing and rubbing the back of his neck, then casting an uneasy glance out at the massing mutants. He's getting pretty sick of waiting for them to move in, and the thoughts Juba just filled his head with aren't helping his patience any. "Wish they'd get in range," he grunts, changing the subject. "Can't see shit."

"That reminds me..."

A metal device presses against his stomach and he looks up cautiously, not quite daring to believe it. "You've got incendiary grenades?"

—because in that case, Dean knows what to do.

"Hunter gave me two," Juba says.

"Hold onto one," Dean orders, rising to a crouch and balancing his rifle on Juba's pack. Then, grabbing his allotted blade, he eases himself between the two guns and down from the lift— _out of the corner of his eye, he sees Juba stiffen, but fuck him for thinking he's the only daredevil in the company_ —and takes a few wary steps into the atrium.

"On my command," he says to Juba.

"Yes, Sir," Juba returns flatly. 

"And for Christ's sake, stay put this time!" Dean calls over his shoulder.

He hears a few choice words from Company South, all of which sound vulgar, and flips Juba the bird.

As he moves deeper into the atrium, he figures he should try praying. "Dear God," he says under his breath, "you've seen fit to land me in all sorts of sticky situations over the years, and 'm not so sure as I truly believe in your existence, but if you've got your ears on, don't let 'em rush me all at once... Please... Uh, Amen," he adds awkwardly.

Nothing moves.

Mentally cursing any deity that can hear him, he edges into the ring. The nearest mutants are still a hundred yards off, but if they charged now, they'd definitely overtake him before he could get back to his guns. And Juba would die without realizing what a genius Dean can be, especially when motivated by the fear of a thousand giant claws skewering him all at once.

"All right, you creepy bastards!" he bellows, hoping they understand English, "Come'n get me!"

A single, slavering mutant breaks off from the pack, running at him. Dean waits for it to come within striking distance and swings his blade, hard and true, separating its head from its shoulders and misting himself with blood in the process.

He really doesn't like the way the rest of the creatures stay put— _aren't they supposed to be mindless killers_?—but raises his voice in a taunt just the same: "Ah come on! That the best you got? Y'all afraid of this little pig sticker? Come on, baby! Come'n get—"

His voice falters as he senses a disturbance in the crowd to his left. He continues hollering after a moment, but with mounting trepidation: "I taste awesome! Yeah! Y'all ain't never had a bite of _this_ juicy ass—come on!" Eyes locked on the swelling line to his left, he roars, "I stand before you on behalf of the Spreading Red Menace! of the mighty Bauhaus Corporation! Power to the people—except sodomites! Which means all your sorry asses will get sent straight back to... to... Oh fuck me," he finishes softly.

To his left the crowd has parted, admitting another, much larger class of mutant. For a second, Dean can't make sense of what he's seeing: a mutant with both arms intact, covered in scorched plate armour, and carrying twin whips of what look like molten iron, glowing red with heat. The monster regards him with empty metal eyesockets which nonetheless convey interest, even recognition, and it's the cloying familiarity in this blank gaze that hastens Dean's understanding: Bauhaus' special project, von Steiner's own _Goliath_ , must have somehow fallen into the machine.

 _Now_ the crowd is closing in on him. He waits, stomach fluttering and muscles tense, as the mutants cut off his escape. He can hear Juba shouting behind him but he tunes it out. A mutant grabs for him— _plunge, withdraw, decapitate_ —and another approaches behind— _punch, s_ _wing, hack_ —with a friend— _slash, jab, avoid—_ and another _—maim, stab, slice_. He dances adroit through the thickening crowd, ducking and weaving and cutting down mutants one by one, attention focused on Goliath. If only he will step inside the ring...

"Urgh," he gasps as pain explodes across his back. And then gunfire— _Juba didn't wait for his command, that asshole_ —but Goliath remains focused on Dean, and now he's three steps from the ring... Two...

Pulling the pin from the grenade, he lobs it into the center of the atrium and takes off in the opposite direction as fast as his legs will carry him.

"Fire!" he cries, waving his arms to Juba. "Fire!"

Juba puts a couple rounds in kneecaps and then the world erupts, throwing Dean to the ground and driving the air from his lungs. He manages to roll onto his back, struggling to catch his wind through the airborne sediment of rock and old bones, and then Juba's there, hauling him to his feet and dragging him back to the relative sanctuary of the lift. As Juba hoists him up, he realizes that his shirt is drenched in something warm and sticky—he must have gotten hit, then. Can't feel a thing through the adrenaline.

"Goddamned crazy bastard," Juba swears at him in English this time, turning Dean to his side as he hacks, nearly choking on a mouthful of blood. He fights for control of his breathing, then yanks Juba close so he can hear.

"He down?" Dean rasps.

"Who?"

Dean coughs and splutters as his mouth fills with blood again. "Goliath," he manages, trying to sit up. Juba manhandles him down behind his pack, even though Dean can't see _anything_ from back there, and scans the atrium.

"He's down," Juba confirms.

Dean's muscles go slack with his relief.

"Oh wait..."

Hurling another silent oath heavenward, Dean struggles to get back onto his stomach, taking hold of his waiting rifle and trying to ignore the blood pooling in the dip of his spine. He mows down a few mutants that were lumbering nearby, and squints through the settling dust, trying to locate Goliath. Then he sees a red line of fire coiling through the air.

"Juba!" he hisses. Juba's firing into a pack of mutants as they make a beeline towards the lift. Like Dean asked, Juba aims for their knees, taking them down faster. But Dean sees that glow again, from the rubble in the center of the atrium, and knows Goliath will rise soon—time to change tactics. One of them should hold off the mutants while the other tries to take down the juggernaut. And (though Dean will never cop to it) even on his best days, Juba's still a better sniper.

Dean's head pounds and his vision blurs—he's losing blood fast—and he has to cough before he can speak again. "Juba, you hear me? Take Goliath out!"

 

 

Juba's shots echo through the atrium as they bounce off Goliath's armor

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry -- I know this is a crummy way to end the chapter, but I had to stop writing and do other things and I didn't want the draft to be deleted.
> 
> If you want to subscribe, I do plan on finishing this story, hopefully soonish (I've already written the ending, but the middle section is like one long fight scene...) so... when I update, I'll post the ending as chapter 2, but the majority of the fic will probably be in chapter 1, if that makes sense.


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